East Coweta student selected for leadership trip

by Staff Reports

With support from dedicated East Coweta High School teacher Martha Milam, student Kit Matheny was selected to participate in the prestigious Washington Youth Tour, sponsored by Coweta-Fayette EMC and scheduled for June 13-20.

East Coweta High School student Kit Matheny recently received what some have described as life-changing news: she was selected to attend the Washington Youth Tour, an all-expense-paid leadership trip sponsored by the electric membership corporations (EMCs) in Georgia, including Coweta-Fayette EMC.

Matheny will join 105 other Georgia high school students during the event set for June 13-20, with stops in Georgia and Washington, D.C. As Georgia’s oldest leadership program for teens, the Washington Youth Tour is designed to teach students about U.S. history, the role of government and the importance of community and public service.

According to Tony Sinclair, CEO of Coweta-Fayette EMC, the Youth Tour is an opportunity for exceptional students to meet face-to-face with members of Georgia’s congressional delegation and visit historical points of interest in Georgia and the nation’s capital.

“Making the pilgrimage to D.C., with an emphasis on our nation’s rich heritage, is something many adults, and certainly high school-aged kids, never experience,” said Sinclair. “Particularly during their formative years, the trip opens them up to possibilities they otherwise may not have considered. When you add personal tours of the sacred memorials and monuments, and stories of sacrifices made by others, the Youth Tour offers a history lesson that can’t be learned from any textbook or classroom in Georgia.”

Kit Matheny is the daughter of Ronald and Beth Matheny of Newnan. Upon graduation, she plans to major in theater at Armstrong University.

The trip will involve stops in Georgia and D.C. and includes historic attractions like the Little White House in Warm Springs and many D.C. landmarks, including the Smithsonian Museums, Holocaust Museum, Mount Vernon, Supreme Court, Capitol, Washington Monument and the FDR, Jefferson, World War II and Lincoln Memorials.

The Washington Youth Tour was inspired by former president Lyndon Johnson who, in 1965, encouraged electric cooperatives “to send youngsters to the nation’s capital where they can actually see what the flag stands for and represents.”

Coweta-Fayette EMC is a consumer-owned cooperative providing electricity and related services to more than 74,000 member accounts in Coweta, Fayette, Heard, South Fulton, Clayton, Spalding, Troup and Meriwether counties.